Hartmann Report

The GOP & the billionaires who fund them learned their lesson. Never again would they allow a rightwing justice to stray beyond the rigid ideological boundaries set at that justices’ confirmation… The media is interpreting the relationship between rightwing billionaires and Supreme Court justices as good old fashioned corruption, as if they’re trying to buy votes. But what if, instead, it’s actually something far more insidious than that? Billionaires Harlan Crow and Paul Singer both have had business before the Supreme Court, but both also argue that they’ve never specifically discussed that business with Clarence Thomas or Sam Alito, respectively. And Thomas and Alito, while not recusing themselves from those cases, claim that they’re not taking into consideration the positions, needs, or desires of their “good friends” when making decisions or casting votes. If all that’s true, why do we keep seeing instances of rightwing billionaires reaching out to Supreme Court justices? Why did the Koch brothers regularly invite Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas to their mansions, resorts, and private events?

The essence of fascism is intimidation. It stops resistance, stifles opposition, and causes the fearful and desperate to cooperate. It scares off both researchers, reporters, and opinion writers… She thought she was doing the right thing, tracking down the source of deadly lies that killed a half-million Americans and almost led to the overthrow of the US government. Little did she know that the very people whose behavior she was studying would use the power of government to try to destroy her work, funding, and even her personal life and reputation.

Or, as was common in the 19th century, should they be dissolved by the state and have their assets sold to other corporations that will behave in a way that is not toxic to democracy or the community? Back in 2022, I suggested that our federal government should spend about one-third of the cost of the Trump Tax Cuts to buy the three largest oil companies in this country. They could then be run for the public interest, prevented from continuing to fund climate change denial, and end their support of toxic Republican politicians. So far, no members of Congress or the administration have picked up on my suggestion, but the people in Maine have a similar idea and they’re moving forward with it. Ninety-seven percent of the electric power in Maine is provided by two for-profit corporations, Versant and Central Maine Power (CMP).

They’ve read their history: if they can embed fascism deeply at every level of American government, business, and civic life, it will take generations to rip it out… The GOP is increasingly clear about their goal: Make America Russia, or at least Russia’s mini-me, Hungary. They are openly embracing a modern, westernized, Christian white supremacy-based version of classic fascism. And the MAGAT Republicans have a three-step process to bring it about that they’re already putting into place. They’re willing to put enormous time and resources into the project, because they know that once fascism fully seizes a nation it’s extremely difficult to dislodge it. In 19th century America, it took a Civil War to defeat the Southern fascist movement we call the Confederacy, as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Democracy.

"I love her dearly. . . . I cannot rationally pinpoint any specific reason for doing this." —Charles Whitman, in a note he left after murdering his mother on the day of his mass-shooting spree, August 1, 1966

The Best of the Rest of the News. — The GOP's latest “Biden scandal” collapses into another clown-show, but the damage has already been done. — You must both support and vote for the criminal! — Why is Georgia delaying software updates on hack-vulnerable voting machines? — Why is the FBI going after pro-choice abortion rights activists? — Is the PGA-LIV golf pact dead or dying? — Sneaky Billionaire Alert! So-called “grassroots” parents groups demanding schools purge themselves of books about Black or queer people are pulling down big bucks from morbidly rich rightwingers. — Which women would Jesus ban from the ministry? — Crazy Alert! Suicide bombers are the best role model for Christians? — There’s a new must-see movie about Russian atrocities during the Ukraine war: The Eastern Front. — Finally, RIP Daniel Ellsberg.

Money in politics is a lot like Oxycontin, and the people who pass it out are often just as cynical, sociopathic, and deadly as the Sackler family… Historians and futurists tell us that we are moving into a new era, a Fourth Turning. It certainly feels that way. But the people who have been in charge —who we seek to replace — particularly George W. Bush, Donald Trump, and the Republican Congresses associated with them — have so rigged the game that it’s going to be a real challenge to dislodge the corrupt systems they’ve put into place. From think tanks to PACs to online publications to newspapers to talk-radio hosts to television networks to paid online trolls and Wikipedia editors there is a vast conservative ecosystem that will do everything it can to destroy any genuine, practical and achievable effort to reform America. Even though most are working class people, they think of themselves as Republicans and thus eagerly take $15 or $20 an hour for the task of screwing their neighbors. The worst thing for America, they’ll tell you, would be a level playing field, rather than one that’s so very tilted toward the morbidly rich.

Democracy is based on the will of the people & that is a function of the information to which citizens have access - Can America rescue our nation’s currently polluted streams of information and news? How can a democratic republic balance the need for a free and independent press with the pressure of fascism-loving billionaires buying and controlling large chunks of that sector? Recovering from three years of pandemic, our middle class staggered by 42 years of Reagan’s neoliberalism, rejecting the efforts of Republican neofascists in the mold of Trump, America appears poised on the edge of an egalitarian and small-d democratic renaissance. Observers of the cycles of history agree.

Does Trump’s goal appear to be, to paraphrase Ron DeSantis, to “Make America Russia?” If Trump shared American secrets with Putin, our intelligence agencies are not going to call a press conference to let us all know. Similarly, short of a trial for treason, it’s extremely unlikely such an allegation — even if true — will show up in a court of law. Lawyers, judges, and juries just don’t have the security clearances necessary, so the documents brought to court are almost certainly not among the very most sensitive: they’re just enough to get a conviction.

Is the GOP Plan to Be Content With a "Red States" Fascist Empire? Increasingly, the Republican Party is consolidating its power in a minority of states and turning them into little laboratories of neo-fascism. This is tough on people in those states — particularly people who are Black, queer, or female — but what is its larger impact on America? “Power tends to corrupt,” Lord Acton famously noted, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This is the great danger at the state level for both American political parties as the GOP sinks deeper and deeper into its mire of regionalism, violence, racism, homophobia, misogyny, gun deaths, pollution, and victimhood, led by corrupt politicians like Trump, DeSantis, Kemp, and Abbott.